


Perfect Rock Bottom

by tisfan



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Iron Man (Movies)
Genre: Age Difference, Alternate Universe - Prohibition Era, F/M, Female Tony Stark, Kissing, Russian Mafia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-19
Updated: 2020-04-19
Packaged: 2021-03-01 23:08:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,039
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23735146
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tisfan/pseuds/tisfan
Summary: Toni Stark, disgraced heiress, runs a speakeasy and is in danger from Russian Mafia head, Ivan Vanko with a grudge against Howard and prohibition cop, Agent Phil Coulson, the man who shattered her dreams when she was seventeen.One wants her money and connections, the other one wants her heart. And a goddamn drink, is that too much to ask?
Relationships: Natasha Stark/Phil Coulson
Comments: 27
Kudos: 137





	Perfect Rock Bottom

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Yellowjust](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yellowjust/gifts).



_Rock Bottom_ was supposed to be a fancy chair shop, especially featuring several new-fangled reclining seats. And in truth, they did sell a fair number of chairs. Toni had made rather most of them in the workshop above the showroom. She always did like to tinker with things, and the chairs were fun and harmless.

But what they also did was guarded an entrance down into a basement speakeasy.

 _Perfect Rock Bottom_ was the sort of place that a gent could get up to a little no-good with a pretty lady of his choice in comfort and relative security from the Untouchables and their ilk who kept trying to shut down the watering holes. 

That was a little less harmless, and after the showroom closed, Toni was a singer and dancer and booze slinger at the bar. She was living a double life, and neither of those lives were particularly on the approved list for heiresses of dubious mortality.

Which was why, when Phil Coulson entered the _Rock Bottom_ , Toni Stark noticed.

These days, Phil Coulson was one of the agents for New York’s version of Elliot Ness’s Untouchables. In this case, Shield. Nick Fury wasn’t half the detective Ness was, but he was colder and more devious. In either case, seeing his right hander wasn’t the best news Toni had all day.

She’d once seen him almost every day. Back when she was a green girl, and he was her father’s bodyguard. But that had been years and years ago. She wasn’t that girl anymore. And he wasn’t -- probably never had been -- her friend.

“Mr. Coulson,” Toni said, coming out onto the showroom floor. There were several layers of cork between the store’s floor and the bar beneath, and it wasn’t much past dinner so the place wasn’t really rocking, not just yet. She had no reason to believe that Coulson was here for anything other than buying a chair.

But, despite the carefully arranged suit, the earnest, gently balding forehead, the mild-mannered smile -- Coulson put forth all the zazzle of a jalopy -- there’d always been a stripe of something sharp to him. Like a knife in the darkness.

He’d always set her nerves alight, even if she wouldn’t have admitted it with her toes to the fire.

“Miss Stark, so lovely and unexpected to see you here,” Coulson said, like he hadn’t known she was here. Like he hadn’t specifically come. Probably to see her. Or to arrest her patrons.

It was unlikely in the extreme that he was merely here to buy a chair.

“I do have to make a living, you know,” she said. “Howard threw me out without a penny when I wouldn’t marry that stooge of his.”

“Obadiah Stane? I don’t blame you, that man’s more like farm equipment than man. Like an incoming bulldozer.” He bared his teeth in a chilling mockery of Obie’s good ol’ boy smile.

“Never you mind that,” Toni said, shivering. “There’s no point in dwelling on it. Is there something I can interest you in?”

“Was that a proposal, Miss Stark?”

She glared at him. “I was thinking more like a wingback. Probably in plaid, that would suit you.”

“More of a pinstripes man,” Coulson said. “I was thinking you might… offer me a drink.”

“Were you? Thinking that? I must say, that seems rather farfetched to me. In fact, Mr. Coulson, I’d be quite surprised to learn that you think at all. I was under the impression that you let Fury do your thinking for you.”

“Yes, well, he’s on vacation,” Coulson said, deadpan.

There wasn’t much response to that. Toni waited. Coulson watched her waiting. They knew each other too well for all this posturing.

“Out with it, Philip,” Toni finally said. “What is it you want?”

“Do you want the truth without that drink? Because--”

“Phil--”

“All right, Toni--”

She tried to ignore how that shivered in her, the way her name dropped off his tongue. There were other things he might do with that tongue that would make her shiver harder.

“--I believe you’re in a great deal of danger.”

“Am I?” Damn, she was starting to want that drink.

“If I tell you I know about your second occupation, and that I’ve been keeping it from Fury for years now, will you trust me enough?”

“What danger, if not from you and Shield, if that’s true?”

“Your father’s thrown you off, that’s true--”

“Howard is an old stick, and stupid besides--”

“He thought Stane could protect you.”

“He thought wrong.”

“From Vanko.”

“ _What_?”

Toni was really wanting that drink. Possibly to throw it in Phil's face She risked a glance up and said face was much closer than she expected.

Vanko was Russian mafia, dealers in illegal hooch and weapons, protection rackets and whores, the whole nine. Toni just sold beer and whiskey out of the basement. She was no threat to him.

Howard… Howard Stark on the other hand, was a threat. A legitimate threat, and one who had the ear of politicians and police. His gun business was booming, and he was respected and admired wherever he went.

His daughter, Toni, who was as like him as two peas in a pod all the way down to their libertine manners and their taste for good scotch, was considered thoroughly dissolute, a disgrace. Just because of what color bonnets they’d worn as children. Well, it was a man’s world, but Toni would show them all.

Provided she lived long enough to do it.

“You really think Vanko’s after me? What for?”

“Revenge on Howard? Because he wants you to spill your father’s secrets? Because he’s drunk too much of his own bathtub vodka and his brain’s rotten?”

“I’m so glad you have respect for people who admire me,” Toni complained.

“I admire you well enough, Miss Stark, to know you don’t put up with flattery,” Coulson said. “And to know you’re an honest lover, and a discrete one. Most of your fancy men are quick enough to talk about who they’ve made a conquest of, but I’ve never heard you whisper a word.”

“Because I’m not a fool,” Toni said. “You really want that drink?”

Coulson wouldn’t lie to her. He might arrest her for running a speakeasy, but he wasn’t going to lie about it first.

“Yes, ma’am, I do.”

“Well, first thing, wipe that _ma’am_ out of your mouth,” Toni suggested. “You sound like Jarvis.”

“Toni,” Phil said, taking her hand and pulling her a little closer. Too close. She could see the faint stubble on his jaw, the striation in those deceptively mild hazel eyes. “You can trust me.”

She tried to tug her hand out of his grasp. “You don’t know how much I wish that were true.”

“I’ve known you since you were practically a child,” Phil said. “I want to protect you--”

“Well, that isn’t what I wanted from you,” Toni spat. “Let go of me.”

“Toni--”

“I’ve just about had an earful of you,” she burst, angry with the way his fingers felt against her skin, wanting to fall into his arms, and knowing that he’d be just as like to let her fall to the floor. “Do you want that drink or not?”

“Yes.” He said it in a low, husky sort of voice, the kind that asked her if she was willing to keep that offer open or if the bank was closed. 

“You know the way?”

He did, going over to the fabric sampler and opening the hidden door without hesitation. Damn. he could have had her arrested at any time and hadn’t. Which meant she owed it to him to hear him out.

“This is a mistake,” she said to herself.

“It’s not,” Phil answered her anyway. “Toni, you know I had to--”

“To what? Trample all over a young girl’s dreams? Phil, I was _seventeen_ , you could have been gentle.” She’d confessed her feelings, looking bashfully into her lap, hoping that he’d swear undying love for her, promise to ask for her hand, that they’d make it, he’d have her--

He hadn’t quite laughed in her face, but his no had left no room for negotiation. Her frail hopes in a million little pieces.

“You were _barely_ seventeen,” Phil said, “and gentle was never anything I could have been with you, Toni.”

“Why not?”

“Because,” and she found herself pressed against the wall, Phil’s arms bracketing her in the narrow enclosure, preventing her from fleeing, “because if I didn’t put a stop to it, right then--”

“You wanted me,” Toni gasped, shocked. Then, warm heat dripped into her stomach. “You still do.”

A woman now, experienced with men and with love and desire and all those things she knew nothing of as a seventeen year old debutante, she recognized the look as resigned lusting. He _wanted_ her. And if he didn’t want her to know it, it was too late now.

One hand that had been a prison suddenly cupped her face tenderly, and he leaned forward, but paused just before reaching her lips. Because Philip never could just let her win, even when they’d played checkers together when she’d just been a child.

But she could wait. She wasn’t that green girl anymore. She knew what she wanted, and she was pretty sure she was going to get it, so she could wait.

“This is madness,” he whispered against her ear, but made no move to let her go.

Whatever she was going to say -- something curt and sarcastic, no doubt -- was cut off as he took possession of her lips, plundering her mouth with a heady groan.

It was perfect and right, delicious and wicked. Everything she’d always dreamed it would be, while knowing she’d never, ever have it.

He let go of her mouth to gasp, to taste the skin of her throat, to nuzzle at her chin.

“If I wake up in an opium haze in my bed, alone,” Toni gasped, her hands going around his neck to hold him to her, “I am going to kill you without the courtesy to tell you why.”

“If you ever wake up alone again,” Phil said, “you have my permission.”

Toni thrilled to it, even as her sense of pride prickled at his easy assumption. “What sort of a woman do you think I am?”

Phil pulled back to look at her, earnest and handsome and a little bit bashful. “One worth waiting for. You have to understand, Toni-- Howard would have ruined me, that would have been no life to give you. I would risk everything I am for you, but I wouldn’t-- I couldn’t-- risk your future.”

“Took you long enough to come to me, once my future was set,” she grumbled.

“Too long,” Phil agreed. “And now, much as I’d like--”

“What, to ravish me in the stairwell?”

“Exactly.”

Toni’s knees nearly gave out.

“Uh--”

“We don’t have time. Let’s have that drink, and then I need to hide you.”

“I’m not running, Phil,” Toni said, but she led him down into the speakeasy, ignoring that her hair was mused and her lips were swollen and she was a mess. Everyone had seen her a mess before, no one would care now. “This is my place. I’m not letting Vanko drive me out over some imagined slight that hurting me will cause Howard any pain.”

Phil took a deep breath. “Then I’ll have to protect you here. I’m not letting you go again.”

Well, she liked the sound of that.

“Pepper, dear, sweet, Miss Potts, can I get-- an Old Fashioned for the gentleman, and a Southside for me. And muddle that mint gently, not like you’re trying to grind a week’s worth of frustrations out of it.”

“Will that be all, Miss Stark?”

“That will be all.”

“We need to talk about this, Toni,” Phil said, rolling his glass in his palm, the ice clicking together.

“Drink first.”

“It’s urgent.”

“Drink faster?”

“You’re not exactly a team player,” Phil said, but he knocked back the whiskey in a few neat swallows.

“Well, we’re not exactly a team yet, are we?”

“We could be.”

“We will be,” Toni declared, finishing her drink. “The best.”


End file.
